Student activism: 1976 to parking issues to Rhodes Must Fall

A few months ago, I spoke to Ronald Lamola and Dr Thabi Leoka, about student activism. It was a wide-ranging discussion about politics on South African campuses over the ages. Lamola and Leoka represent different brands of activism. Thabi was part of a non-racial, non-political and ‘rainbow-ist’ take-over of the Wits SRC in the 1990s. Lamola argues that there is no student politics outside politics. They bring the perspective of what some have begun to consider a (largely) silent generation of the 1990s and early 2000’s. What drove student’s political passions back then and how do they feel about the current campus transformation agenda?